Sprint, on the other hand, will not start its roll-out until mid-2012 according to Engadget and PC World. Sprint hopes to have its entire LTE network built out by the end of calendar year 2013. Sprint says that its finished network will reach 250 million Americans compared to the 120 million that its WiMAX network currently reaches.

As previously reported, the LTE network is being developed in conjunction with LightSquared and will operate on 800MHz, 1600MHz, and 1900MHz spectrums.

For those of you that bought into Sprint's WiMAX network, or are still for some reason looking to purchase a WiMAX device at this point, Sprint will continue to offer WiMAX dongles, hotspots, and smartphones through 2012.

In an effort to lessen the strain on its network, Sprint will also be taking a page from AT&T's playbook by offering free Wi-Fi hotspots across the nation. This will reportedly cut LTE network congestion by 20 percent.

quote: This is amazing technology, however, in this article it states they will be rolling out LTE in 1H 2012, however, that is incorrect. They have been building LTE in 22,000 towers already and will launch to 125 million in 1H (they will most likely end 2012 with much more, I would presume).

What I've heard is that switching from WiMax to LTE at the tower can often be done with just a software update. It's more problematic to switch phones because most phone hardware is tied to Sprint's WiMax frequency range (2.5 GHz), and is incapable of transmitting/receiving at the frequencies to be used by Sprint's new LTE service (1.9, 1.6 GHz, and 800 MHz).

I think your right, it can be, but this is Sprint's own LTE on a brand spanking new tower design, so I don't think they are going that route. With this network vision, it appears they are using completely new infrastructure, including new radio nodes and multi node base stations, so in reality, this is a whole network with LTE ready from the get go. Looks like they will leave Clear's base stations for their wimax on 2500 mhz. And yeah your right, their LTE will require completely differnet Qualcomm chips, but I'm not too concerned. It looks like Sprint's LTE could be up to 5x as fast as their Wimax was when you look at the trials.